The Spare Princess
by Lady Altair
Summary: Half-blood servant Walden Macnair has had a faulty prize thrown into his lap; the frail society daughter, Evangeline Prince. The courtship and marriage of a half-blood monster and the fragile, pureblood princess who wasn't good enough for anyone else.
1. A Kitten for the Manticore

_The Spare Princess_

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It was at the engagement ball of her elder sister where Walden Macnair first heard of Evangeline Prince.

The patriarch of the Prince family held court at a table along the side of the ballroom. He gestured expansively over the whirl of merriment and color. "A fine affair," he proclaimed with no small amount of pride, looking around. It truly was nothing less than grand, a white marble ballroom adorned in silver and black, all the finest families of Wizarding Britain in attendance. The old man, dressed in simple but magnificently embroidered black robes, cast a veiled, malicious glance over at his youngest son. "The last one I'll wager we'll be seeing for a Prince girl, isn't that right, Elliot?" Everard Prince said over a glass of scotch, and the younger of his two sons stiffened, his own glass of scotch sloshing slightly in the glass as he did.

"There's still Evangeline, Father," he corrected, with the hesitant, already-defeated air of one being cornered into an argument had (and, as a matter of course, lost) many times before.

"Ha! Evangeline, poor girl!" the old man scoffed theatrically and without any sympathetic meaning whatsoever, looking around those seated at the table to the other men sitting with liquor in their hands. There was a cruel light in his eyes and a mean curl to his lip as he carried on with this charade. "And who shall she marry? What man is there for her? Abraxas? Would Lucius like the poor little thing for a wife? You, Renaud, would she do for Rabastan or Rodolphus?" There was a smug sort of satisfaction in his voice; this was nothing more than a carefully constructed humiliation, the prodding of an open wound, for his younger son. This Everard Prince was not a man who put much stock in familial affection. "There are none left with blood fit to mingle with our line, Elliot, none that would have her."

It said something that, though Macnair sat in their midst, the closest thing he had to a wife was the young dancer from a sleazy pub in Knockturn deluded enough to think she might get a ring and a moderately respectable name from him and persisted accordingly. He was good-looking and young, with a decent job in the Ministry of Magic. And no one cast half a glance in his direction, a half-blood of unremarkable name and lineage, when the question of suitable husbands for this last Prince daughter was raised. These men might pour out an extra measure of scotch and allow him amongst them in the guise of an equal, but he was no man for any daughter of theirs, even one so unmarriageable and pitiable as Miss Evangeline Prince.

"Frail little thing," Abraxas dismissed her, picking up his cue from Everard with similar smug eagerness. "Pretty enough, I will give you that; quite the fragile little beauty, Elliot, so like her mother! But best to let that sort of blood flow no further. Things can deteriorate in just a few short generations, we must always be looking forward."

Familial honor and bloodpride drove her father to speak. There might have been no husband for his poor, frail Evangeline, but the slight on her blood, on _his _blood, could not be ignored. "She's very gifted, fragile as she is. Her skills in Potions and Arithmancy run unparalleled. She's not ungifted in Transfiguration, either."

Wendell McMillan, who'd remained uncomfortably and increasingly angrily silent as Elliot's father had started in on the youngest Prince son, picked up in his friend's defense. "Miss Evangeline is quite good friends with my Regina; a very polite and well-bred girl. A credit to her noble family," he vouched staunchly, squaring his shoulders and meeting Old Man Prince's beady black eyes straight on.

Everard barked hoarsely, wheezing on his laughter. "Of course she is, Wendell, a most dutiful and obedient daughter."

Edmund, Everard's eldest son and heir, had inherited already the cruel streak so obvious in his father. He turned to his younger brother, with that same sort of smug, ugly smile their father had employed. "And she will serve our house well, Elliot. There will always be a place for her here, rest assured, brother. The Prince family does not abandon its loyal daughters and sons." He smirked, reveling in the unsaid: _loyal, if worthless._

"A pity really, such a waste of good blood," Everard muttered, draining the dregs of his scotch and standing to return to the ballroom, dismissing the gathering to the larger affair whirling around them in vibrant colors and lively conversation.

Not a few weeks later, Macnair passed word to the Prince family of an impending Ministry 'inspection'—funny the useful things you could overhear in a lift—and Everard was very grateful. Or at least he seemed so, in his slick, understated way.

Over drinks in the drawing room of the Prince family estate, Everard set his younger son choking as he calmly announced, "Mr. Macnair, I would like to give you Evangeline."

"You _what_?" Elliot sputtered, red-eyed from the burn of alcohol in his windpipe, as his brother looked on in amusement.

"I'm giving him your daughter for his wife, Elliot, if he's not foolish enough to refuse her hand," Everard repeated as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You'd give a kitten to a manticore," he spat, glaring over at the brawny giant of a man stuck uncomfortably into the chair across from him. "Give a Prince daughter—_my _daughter—to a half-blood butcher! You must be mad to think I'll allow that!"

"_You_ must be mad to think you have a choice, Elliot," Everard said lightly, taking a leisurely sip of his brandy. "I've found a husband for her, son, you should be thanking me."

"If you were going to allow my daughter to marry so _beneath _herself, you might've approved the suit of that Abbott boy last year. At least he has a respectable reputation." Elliot Prince's eyes darted over to the man sitting silent in his chair as though he'd protest the slight on his name and character. Walden met the gaze with an imperceptible shrug.

He _did_ have a reputation, and he was proud of it; a friend of the High ring of purebloods, a brutal, violent hand of their wills. His reputation was feared, respected, and that was a great deal more than anyone ever expected from a too-handsome man of no name, mixed blood, and uncertain character.

Everard scoffed. "Those blood-traitor Abbotts—Evangeline's children would've been marrying mudblooded filth, Elliot, passing down our noble line to ill-deserving, dirty-blooded whelps!"

"_Your _daughter married _muggle_ filth, Father, or are we still pretending Eileen's dead?" Elliot roared, enraged, his sense flying out of his head as unwise words likewise flew from his mouth.

Everard's face went stone-frozen, the only motion a twitch in the grey, crepe-like skin around his eyes.

"You speak that name in my house?" he asked his youngest son, cool and deadly. "I have no daughter."

Elliot scoffed, too far gone in his anger (because, despite the steel and tissue paper layers of nobility and tradition and bloodpride, Elliot was _not _like Everard; he _loved _his daughter and would not sit back and watch her handed off to a butcher-monster-halfblood as a token of passing gratitude) to stop now. "Of course, and that _pure Prince blood _you put so much stock in isn't, right as we speak, flowing in the veins of her muggle-fathered son! All of this already on our name, and you denied my poor daughter what happiness she would have found with that boy, a pureblood who would have her, only to give her to _this_!" he hissed. Elliot was out of his seat, brandy glass clutched tight in his hand. For a moment, it seemed as though he was about to toss the alcohol at his father, but he only smashed the glass down onto the thick carpet. It didn't shatter dramatically, cushioned by the priceless Persian rug, but it did break and the liquid wicked away into the carpet.

And Elliot left. The room was still but for eyes nervously glancing sideways at each other, at old man Prince, waiting for something to happen.

The pause was very long. And then Everard Prince turned back to Walden. "Mr. Macnair might be unworthy of our dear daughter, but he's willing to climb, isn't that right?"

"Anything to maintain your good graces, sir. The honor of your blood for my children is a great gift, indeed," Walden rumbled, inclining his head respectfully. Everard barked a laugh.

"Indeed it is, Mr. Macnair, indeed it is. There are sweet rewards for those of good mind and character. You'll do for her." Old Mr. Prince laughed to himself as he called for his wife to begin the arrangements.

And so, a few days later, Walden found himself shunted into the back garden of the Prince estate, in nicer robes than he'd ever worn in his life, and approaching the girl, posed statue-like on a stone bench by the rose bushes and chaperoned by Everard's sour spinster sister, who would be his wife.

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**Author's Notes: **All the news of the updates on this, as well as the still untitled Hestia Jones piece, will be posted on my Author's profile, so check back to that. I have the first two chapters of the Hestia piece finished and am a good two thousand words into the third. I'm trying to get some slack built in so I don't have omgdelays between postings if something goes wrong, so I'll probably post the first chapter of Hestia in the first week of August. This might be a little more sporadic, since it's taking something of a back-burner position, but it shouldn't be too bad!

Please review! Now that I'm embarking on chaptered fic, it is going to mean even more than the one-shots in terms of keeping up my motivation and maintaining my work ethic! I WILL finish what I start. I will I will I will!

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	2. The Thorn Price

_The Spare Princess_

_Chapter Two: The Thorn Price_

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Evangeline was not as small as he had imagined; he'd seldom heard her name without some variation of 'frail' or 'fragile' tacked onto it somewhere. But she doesn't seem noticeably smaller than any of the other Prince daughters. It was relative, of course. Most women seemed the same size to Walden: smaller. Everything else filtered down into two distinct categories: attractive or not. And Evangeline was, he noted with some relief, very beautiful. She smiled at him politely as he approached, awkward in his ill-fitting robes, too tight across his broad shoulders.

"Hello, Mr. Macnair," she greeted him kindly, her eyes dark in her pale, thin face. "Would you like to sit down?" Her long-fingered, lily-white hand swept in a graceful arc to indicate the seat next to her on the stone bench. The chaperone was duly introduced as Aunt Ermengarde and furthermore ignored by Evangeline. Walden rather suspected it was easier that way; the old woman was shooting venomous glances down at the girl. Whether envying her youth or the fact that the girl had narrowly escaped sharing her lamentable fate, there was nothing pleasant or familial in the coolness between the two, but Walden was quickly learning that was nothing uncommon in the Prince clan.

"Thank you," he said, his voice sounding rough and uncultured even to his own ears after the soft, educated tones of hers. It was just as well she had some grace to her manners, because he had none.

She was a lovely little hostess, polite and calm. He didn't speak much and he didn't need to; she neatly kept the conversation up without seeming overly chatty or gossipy, pausing every once in a while to ask his opinion on this or that, all in a soothing, mellifluous sort of voice that was almost like white noise. She seemed to have an endless supply of appropriate conversation topics, all of which skirted neatly around the reason for the both of them sitting here in this garden, the unpleasant Aunt Ermengarde in a chair to the side, eyeing them beadily.

After her father's display of disdain and disapproval, he had been expecting some sickly little waif, corralled against her will and cowering before him as she cried helpless, lamb-to-the-slaughter tears. Most people, women especially, cowered anyway; he was frightening, huge and imposing and possessed of a very dark, heavy manner that brooked no frivolities. But Evangeline seemed perfectly at ease, dwarfed beside him yet with a strength of presence that seemed to shine from the hairline fractures in her chipped china shell.

She almost seemed to enjoy his company, from her light touch on his arm and gentle smiles up at him, but he wouldn't allow himself to imagine things were as easy as all that. This was a gift from old Mr. Prince, the beautiful little creature who smelled innocently of lilacs and honeysuckle, and he gifted no one a rose whose thorns were not sharp as razors.

The afternoon darkened into evening, and Evangeline suggested a walk through the hedge maze. The walk, slow and short though it was, with the spinster Aunt trailing a few steps behind them, was Evangeline's first demonstration of weakness, the thorn price for her beautiful face and kind ways, for she had shown nothing but good manners and fine breeding in their conversation on the bench. Her pale face went grey with exhaustion mere minutes after they walked arm in arm into the maze, her breathing rasped as she drew it quick and shallow as though she couldn't quite catch it. Her grasp on his arm deepened as she shifted her weight. He slowed to accommodate her, stiffened his arm to take more of her weight.

The old aunt clucked unkindly behind them, a sort of dismissive, disgusted exhalation at Evangeline's weakness. The girl's grey-pink lips drew into a line and she pressed on. Walden felt a strange mixture of respect and disappointment; both unusual sentiments for him in the first place, even more extraordinary twined so closely together. She struggled bravely even as her body failed her, and there was some nobility in that. But he could not deny the disappointment; this fragile girl was more than he had expected, but so much less, as well. She might try, she might fight, she might have the strength of mind and character to be great, but in the end, she was not much more than a pet to be coddled and cared for, and Walden Macnair was no gentle master.

They turned a corner and the conversation turned with them. "So, we are to be married in the fall," Evangeline said, breaching the one subject they'd been pretending didn't exist. She'd gathered her breath along with her courage and, though her face remained ashen grey, her voice was strong and sure.

He thought about lying, giving her some pretty phrase about 'if it pleased her' or that it 'was his honor' but already he knew she would not appreciate such false words. It pleased her grandfather and Walden knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Though Everard's gift might be chipped and damaged, it was beyond anything he ever would have had on his own, and Walden was a man duly appreciative of valuable things.

Walden settled for the truth, simple as it was. "Yes."

Evangeline smiled, approving, and her eyes glittered up at him in a way that was anything but breakable. "And I think we shall do very well, Mr. Macnair." And, he found quite to his own surprise, he very much believed her.

Her first letter arrived three days after that meeting in the gardens, elegant calligraphy that took him far too long to decipher spidered across the rich vellum page.

_Dear Mr. Macnair,_

_It is my simple desire that I should know you, if just a little, before I am to bind myself to you as your loyal wife. If it is not too forward of me, I would propose an exchange of letters, if your schedule should allow such an expenditure of your time for me._

_My mother suggests that I write to you of myself, that you may know me better, as well. It seems not unreasonable to me, but I would not trouble you with such things if that is not your wish._

_Yours faithfully,_

_Evangeline Ariadne Prince_

The quill he put to paper to write a reply was hesitant.

_Dear Miss Prince, _he wrote in his heavy-handed, parchment-ripping print.

_There is not much to know about me. I write my own history, there is nothing put__ down that is not in my own hand. Whatever it is you would like to know, though, I would be more than happy to tell you._

_And it would be nice to hear about you, it would not be trouble at all. All I know about you is that you are beautiful and your eyes are blue like how the North Sea looks from my bedroom window during a storm and I have seen enough in them to think that anything you might tell me I would not find unpleasant._

_Your servant,_

_Walden Ian Macnair_

Her reply was not long in coming; he imagined there was not all that much for her to do that would keep her from writing.

_Dear Mr. Macnair,_

_Your kind words are unwarranted but very much appreciated. Soon, though, I imagine we shall stand together in your home by the North Sea and you will realize how my eyes fade before the beauty of the water._

_And, if you would know of me,__ I will begin. My name is Evangeline Ariadne Prince and I am nineteen years old, the youngest daughter of Elliot and Catherine Prince. I enjoy reading, Ice Mice are my favorite sweet, and until you came along, I was meant to remain, useless and alone, in my grandfather's house until I withered away in bitterness and old age._

_Perhaps the most important thing that you should know about me is that I am deeply and eternally grateful to you for the chance you have given to me, and will do everything within my (perhaps woefully limited) power to bring you the sort of happiness and opportunity you have given to me. There is nothing else I can commit in mere ink and parchment that can give you better insight into me than that, so I will say nothing else and hope that what you find when we meet again is sufficient._

_I look forward to our wedding day with great anticipation, and hold nothing but great hope for our future together._

_Yours Faithfully,_

_Evangeline Prince_

Words were not Walden's strength; a dozen sheets of ruined starts filled the rubbish bin next to his desk.

In the end, he posted a letter of plain words and plain sentiments, for he was nothing if not a man of simplicity; all of his clumsy attempts at the flowery and elaborate rung false and empty.

_Dear Evangeline,_

_Your gratitude is a pond and mine is the Atlantic. It is truly my honor, and while I am not good with words, I hope my future actions will, someday, show some fraction of my high regard for you. _

_Unworthy but yours,_

_Walden Macnair_

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**Author's Note: **Really amazing the work you can do with a laptop and an eight hour shift of airport deadness. I got boss approval to bring my computer in to study for my LSATs (woe, woe!) and you can imagine, from this posting and the 10,000 words of Hestia that are now written (YES! 10,000!--and yes, still untitled woeface) not much of that got done. This is getting written faster than I imagined; I've just got such wonderful plans for my wicked little pair and I LOVE writing them. And the first chapter of Hestia will get posted no later than 5 August. Totally promise! :)

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	3. The Unexpected Champion

_The Spare Princess_

_Chapter Three: The Unexpected Champion_

Their wedding was _magnificent, _the like of which had perhaps never been seen. The Prince ballroom was turned out in silver and pale green, the meal lavish, the music ensemble in the corner nearly an orchestra, the flower arrangements beyond imagination. It was beautiful, utterly fitting of a most beloved and cherished daughter to a noble and deserving man.

It felt like some cruel, ugly joke being played. From the wicked grin on Everard Prince's face, that was exactly as it was intended, though for _whom_, Walden wasn't _entirely_ sure. He rather thought, though, that he was the butt of the joke; the groom was, in Walden's opinion, enough of a humiliation for Evangeline, and he came quite inexpensively.

Evangeline walked down the aisle, shoulders curled in under the too-wide grins of her family, her face held for forward and her eyes unseeing as she walked the long aisle flanked by a dozen faces lit in mean-spirited glee. She looked porcelain in her pearl-white gown; breakable beautiful, a statuette on his great-aunt's mantle that he wasn't to touch with his rough, clumsy-strong hands. Elliot walked her down, his gaze locked on Walden the entire length of the long silver carpet. _Utter loathing _was not quite strong enough a word for the hatred Evangeline's father conveyed in his eyes. It was the look of a man who would, without much of a thought—before or after—kill him unpleasantly, if he did not fear the consequences so greatly.

_The consequences_ sat in one of the front seats, looking for the entire world like a proud patriarch. It didn't take much looking, though, to find the spiteful turn to Everard's smile and the devious glint in his sharp black eyes. People called Walden a monster, with his bulk and his axe and his taste for excessive bloodshed in the line of duty, but another sort of devil—a subtler, crueler sort—sat on Everard Prince's shoulder; torturing animals was one thing, torturing your own kin, your own blood was quite another, as far as Walden Macnair was concerned. What good was pure blood if you weren't loyal to it?

Walden stood before this great, cold assembly, in the only robes he'd ever worn that weren't too tight across the shoulders, weren't too short in the hem, and tried to look just as cold and proud as those who watched. He was a pig in a bowtie, paraded for their amusement, but he didn't have to dance.

Elliot's hand was like an icy rock as it found his, guiding it to join Evangeline's with none of the hesitation Walden knew the man was feeling.

Then the man was gone, leaving only Evangeline there beside him, her tiny white hand in his axe-callused ones and the official speaking some disgustingly ironic drivel about love and commitment with his mouth written into an equally ironic line.

Evangeline's eyes were nailed down to the floor. His fingers surreptitiously found her wrist; her heartbeat was fluttering. She had lain calm in this trap, helpless but hopeful; now the hunter came, the end was inevitable, and she flailed silently, frightened and doomed. A vixen with her foot in a trap, and he was the hunter come to claim an ill-won prize.

Her vows were not hesitant. They were spoken in the same steeled voice as she had used that day to bring up the simple subject of their impending marriage. He felt strangely proud of her. His, too, were spoken in as stern and serious a voice as he could manage, his accent burring deeply where Evangeline's soft English accent had slid around the words.

The 'kiss the bride' almost froze him, though. It was only by Evangeline's doing that they were spared an embarrassing hesitation. Her hands did not shake as she reached them up to his jaw, tilting her beautiful diamond face up as her hands gently guided his face down to hers. It probably _looked _like a very sweet, loving, appropriate kiss. It felt like nothing; Walden liked teeth and pressure, liked little grasping hands pulling at his hair and _demanding_, he liked things that almost hurt, liked _hurting _in return. Evangeline might as well have blown a puff of air across his lips for as much as he enjoyed kissing her. But it looked like everything it was supposed to be, and he appreciated the gesture for that.

The cruel joke continued on in the smiles of her family (and her family's friends) as they greeted the guests at the reception. Some held pity in their eyes when they looked at poor, delicate Evangeline and the handsome, rough behemoth that towered next to her, but most just had a sort of malicious amusement in their smoothly delivered congratulations. The compliments on the beautiful bride and the handsome groom seemed somehow backhanded, and there was a certain superiority in their congratulations to him, especially. _Congratulations, _they seemed to say, _you'll find the catch in this bargain soon enough—because there's always a catch, didn't you know. Enjoy what you can, while you can._

Evangeline didn't say much through dinner, and only looked up to meet his eyes a few times. She didn't eat much either; merely picked around her plate with her fork when she needed something to do.

They danced once at their wedding, the traditional opening to the festivities. Evangeline struggled through, her breathing getting labored as the steps added up, and Walden's hand on her waist grew more and more supportive. Hawk eyes surrounded them, waiting with bated breath for Evangeline to make a misstep.

She didn't. She managed through and even managed to reach up at the end and pull down his face for a chaste kiss on the cheek, a flourish at the end of their performance. Her smile was a little wan as they returned to their seats.

A few of her relatives came to ask Walden's permission to dance with his bride. The appropriate answer—'of course'—stalled in his mouth when he looked at the way Evangeline's already-tired face fell, the way the predatory, cruel smiles spread across the men's faces as the music struck up fast. There was no shortage of spite in this family, it seemed; the Princes seemed to subsist on it.

His usually slow temper took hold and sudden, raging, possessive anger boiled through him. Here they stood, at _his _wedding, seeking to humiliate _his _wife. Evangeline, for all her weaknesses and failings, was _his wife_ now, and no pampered, useless relative of hers was going to make a mockery of her now. What was his was precious, and Evangeline was the greatest, the most valuable of his possessions.

"No," was his short, rude reply to their politely phrased requests. "I'll be keeping my wife right here where she belongs." They seemed taken aback at his impolitic behavior, their smarmy grins wiped off their faces in surprise, but none had the nerve to press further—Walden's impressive size was good for something.

Evangeline's hand found his under the table. Though she did not look up at him, her fingers wove themselves through his and squeezed lightly in gratitude. Walden pulled her hand out from under the table and kissed her knuckles. Her eyes flew over to him, her attention captured.

Evangeline smiled beautifully at her unexpected champion, the first expression on her face that was genuine; not polite or expected or choreographed. It looked like some grand accidental victory Walden had stumbled upon with his simple, selfishly motivated gesture. Her happiness was dazzling.

And then Everard breezed up, his cat-eyed wife on his arm. "Ah, the happy couple. Evangeline, dear, won't you thank me for finding you such a wonderful husband? So attentive, everyone's abuzz! Won't even let you out of his sight for a dance or two."

Evangeline smiled, a veneer of placid, long-practiced politeness that crystallized the warm grin she'd graced Walden with. "Grandfather, I am very grateful. This wedding is a dream, truly." She was the picture of deference, but her hand—still wrapped in Walden's under the table—tightened in some unidentifiable emotion, strong but near perfectly veiled.

They didn't stay long at the reception held in their 'honor'. There was nothing really there for them; catty cousins offered Evangeline congratulations that sounded more like smug condolences and more loyal friends filed by in various states of distress and dismay, and Walden heard a hundred sly, thinly veiled references to Evangeline's "fragile" state. The only ones with anything kind to say at all were the few friends she had in attendance; Regina McMillan, a plain friendly girl who, though visibly distressed in Walden's presence, managed to put on the friendliest smile Walden had seen all night as she offered very sincere hopes for their future happiness; Evangeline's elder sister Emmeline too, the newly married Mrs. Vance, had similar wishes.

There was a sad softening of Evangeline's face as she watched her elder sister walk off with a wave and a pitiful smile, across the ballroom to meet her husband. Emmeline and Richard Vance were obviously in love, had been on their own wedding day, that silver-and-black affair where Walden had first heard Evangeline's name. Resigned, hopeless, half-hearted jealousy was written across Evangeline's face as she sat next to her new husband.

A name surfaced like driftwood in his mind; he wondered if that Abbott man who'd offered for Evangeline's hand and been refused was on her mind right then, if he was the light of the quiet regret in her dark eyes.

At a quarter past eleven, Walden carefully broached the subject of retiring. Evangeline, having just been accosted by a near-tearful friend of hers who'd barely managed to wish them happiness, seemed only too eager to escape from this nightmare parody of a wedding.

Walden had only his small, ocean-beaten home on the cliffs to bring Evangeline home to. It seemed symbolic, that strange dichotomy of the palatial ballroom of her grandfather's manor to the warm, lived-in kitchen he Apparated into, Evangeline's arms securely wrapped around him for the Side-Along.

From the joy that shone on her face, though, he might have brought her to the grandest palace instead of his shabby little house in the empty, cold north of Scotland. Only after she'd gone through two of the cupboards did she remember herself and look back for permission, an embarrassed look on her thin face.

He laughed, the sound a little forced. "Go on ahead, it's all yours now, too." She grinned at him and turned back around to poke through the kitchen.

"I've never had anything be really mine," she said quietly, leaning over the sink to look out the window over it, her feet drifting off the ground as she put her weight on the counter. Looking at her, the sentiment echoed in his head. He'd never had anything worth having until Everard tossed her down like a unworthy scrap to a faithful dog.

She looked terribly out of place there; the wrought-silver band, inlaid with diamonds and pearls, she wore in her dark hair was probably worth more than the house itself, maybe even more than the land it sat on, to say nothing of the rest of her jewelry. Her wedding dress was pearlescent, shimmering white amid the battered wood of the cupboards and floor. She was the grand centerpiece of everything he had ever achieved, the pristine pureblood princess who was no longer out of his reach.

Walden Macnair was in the habit of taking what he wanted, and none too gently. But he would be careful with her, he swore to himself as he reached out to brush the fabric of her sleeve, leaned down to press his face into her hair. This was no girl off the street to be treated as he saw fit, this was another creature altogether; his _wife_. She stiffened, curled her shoulders down in not-quite-surprise but managed to soften herself out of the unwilling rigidity as Walden's hand curled around her hip, crushing and snagging the delicate silk of her dress with his work-roughened hands. Evangeline seemed to know perfectly well what was expected of her and went limp, falling back against him obediently.

"Is the sea truly so beautiful from your bedroom window?" she asked quietly as he pulled the sleek dark hair away from her neck. Her pulse hummed under his mouth where he kissed her throat, panic beating against her obedient shell.

"Not so beautiful as you," he breathed into her ear. "Would you like to see?" She shuddered, a pause before nodding.

And, _christ, _was she beautiful. She was his great aunt's precious porcelain statuettes made flesh and pressed into his clumsy hands. Evangeline was nothing he was ever intended to touch, just to look at and admire, because she was meant to do nothing but be beautiful and someday break.

But she was _his _now, and Walden knew how to treat valuable things.

He took her words for what they were: acceptance, permission, surrender. She was light as a china doll in his arms and he would try not to break this toy because he knew he would never ever have another like her and, worse, he knew that was exactly what they all expected him to do.

* * *

While going about the first attempted posting of this a few hours ago, my computer froze for the first time ever. James is now (I fear terminally) ill and unable to connect to the internet or run for more than fifteen minutes without freezing up. For the full and tragic story, see my profile. This is probably going to mess with my writing and posting schedule. We'll see how things pan out.

Please review. The lack of response to LiBaW is disappointing--I'm worried that _it_ is disappointing--but I'm hoping that's just because there wasn't much action in the first chapter.


	4. The Shade in the Corner

_The Spare Princess_

_Chapter Four: The Shade in the Corner_

Evangeline was nothing like any woman Walden had ever touched, nothing like the hard-eyed witches who worked and frequented the pub in Knockturn that he liked. Soft flesh that his fingers dented into instead of the bone and sturdy muscle construct of the dancers, straight, satin-black hair—not like the glossy blue-black of his own, but a matte coal black that he almost expected to rub off on his hands when he touched it—in place of tawdry, lacquered blonde curls, clean pale skin instead of the heavily done glamours and waxy red lipstick that stained his mouth worse than blood.

Strangest and most unusual of all—she yielded when he pushed, didn't struggle or fight him with a smug grin twisting painted lips like they did, knowing how well he liked it. He pushed and she fell without protest, quietly and unquestioningly acquiescing to every slight, unspoken demand. He found himself pushing harder than he had intended, just to see if she would protest. But though her breathing grew strained, though she bit the inside of her lip in discomfort and even pain, though she flinched minutely against his hands, Evangeline never ever told him 'no.' He wondered if she knew the word.

The morning sun through the big window lit the forming bruises on her body as she lay asleep, exhausted and battered in the brand new silk sheets that had been a small part of her dowry. He didn't like the purple and blue on her skin—it wasn't so much fun, really, hurting her. She didn't cry or protest, didn't squeal theatrically like his girls; she was still the vixen in the trap, already too wounded to cry at the new onslaught. It was almost a relief—if she would have played with him, struggled and cried like he liked, it would have been harder to restrain himself, harder to treat her like the wife she was and not the whores he liked.

It was a strange irony that brought him somewhere between fury and laughter—the Princes had given him this fragile doll with a smug sureness that he would shatter her into pieces, but he rather suspected he couldn't. They'd handed him a toy they'd already broken themselves and he was entirely sure that there was no better way to break Evangeline than the way she'd already been broken.

Evangeline smiled hesitantly when she woke, blinking self-consciously as she rearranged the sheet and smoothed her hair, a charcoal scribble across her face and shoulders. "Good morning," she ventured bravely, after a long moment of his silent scrutiny.

"Let me see you," he ordered. With next-to-no hesitation, Evangeline dropped the sheet, swept her hair back, perfectly and immediately obedient. He ran a hand down her neck, over her shoulder. A wince flashed across her face, just a moment of surprising pain, and then it was gone, her face a replica of what it had been even as he prodded her bruises.

"You tell me when I'm hurting you, Evangeline. Don't let me do this to you."

A frown compressed her forehead, her thin black brows pressing down. "But—" she began, the first whisper of anything less than unquestioning obedience.

"I don't enjoy it," he explained, more honestly than anyone—including himself—would have expected. "You stop me, say no, say _something_—you'll be doing us both a favor."

Disconcerted, Evangeline nodded. "Of course."

Walden growled at her. "Don't say 'of course,' say _no." _He pulled her up against him, fingers pressing hard into her arms, her back. "Tell me no, say no, whenever you want, whenever you mean it."

Her eyes were wild now, confused. Eager to appease him, the word was quick out of her mouth. "No!"

Even that felt like a loss; the word was empty, it was just more obedience. He let her go and she shrank back a few inches, her arms curling over her chest protectively. He was scaring her, her wide eyes roved over him like he was about to pounce on her.

"I don't want to…" He stopped. That was probably a lie. "I don't _mean_ to hurt you, so you tell me when I'm doing it. You've probably been told I'm a monster, but you will never have a reason to fear me."

It was beginning to rain outside, and it pattered on the windows, the only sound in the silence. "I don't think you're a monster," Evangeline said, her voice drawing his eyes up to her face, which was looking guilty for whatever reason. Her hand was on his arm, trailing up, white and fine boned against the tanned, scarred, corded length of his arm. She was on her knees beside him, and her face pressed in close to his.

"Then you are very wrong," he said roughly. He was a monster, he was a great handsome monstrous beast and he was proud of it, there was no point in leading her to believe anything else.

"No?" she said, more of a question than any sort of statement, as though testing her voice. "No," she practiced firmly. She smiled softly at him. "No," she said sweetly, and shyly pressed her mouth to his.

He pushed her away, more firmly than he'd intended. "What?" she asked, a thin, uncertain smile threatening on her face. "I thought I was the one saying 'no'?"

"Don't be clever," he groaned, falling back against the pillows and letting her lighten the mood.

"But I _am _clever," she protested, leaning over him with a slight but widening smile on her face and her eyes bright with mock innocence.

"Are you?" he said tiredly, shielding his eyes with his hands.

"Mmm," she murmured what sounded like an affirmative, settling back into the pillows herself, and the two fell into a sort of dozy silence in the grey, rainy light of the morning.

Teapot, the house elf that was another part of Evangeline's dowry, bustled in with breakfast a few minutes later. "Good morning, new Mistress and Master! Master Ev'rard is sending me down to take care of you!" Teapot set the tray up beside their bed and wandered around the room, picking through the discarded clothing that littered the floor. "Would the Mistress like to see her jewelry? Master Ev'rard sent down the chest with Teapot," the house elf squeaked, picking up the tattered remains of Evangeline's white satin negligee with no hint of embarrassment, though Evangeline flushed pink and pulled the silk sheets tighter around herself. (Walden had found his hands ill-suited for the tiny fastenings and grown impatient with the flimsy bit of underwear, the first of his many instances of misconduct.)

The house elf didn't wait for an answer, instead levitating what looked like an antique chest on legs through the door to settle by the bedside. Evangeline frowned as the elf finished her quick sweep around the room and disappeared. Walden took a heavy drink of the tea the elf had left and grimaced—too heavily sweetened.

"This chest is very big," she began hesitantly, edging to the side of the bed, her hand on the lock. It fell away under her touch; some sort of blood enchantment, no doubt. Walden slid up behind her as she lifted the lid up and she gasped; he thought it was from his touch for a moment, but at the first glance of the chest's contents changed his mind.

Diamond and opals and emeralds and rubies and sapphires and a dozen other precious stones Walden couldn't name glittered up from the black velvet that lined the chest like multicolored constellations in the night sky. Wonder and worry threaded her back in taut lines, her shoulders held stiff. After a few long seconds, she reached out to touch one necklace, some silver metal laid in with emeralds and diamonds.

"This was my cousin Eirene's favorite necklace, she'd be so furious if she knew…" she whispered, tracing the woven silver carefully. "My grandfather is very particular about the jewelry we take with us when we marry," she explained, still fingering the jewelry. "He wouldn't let Emmeline or Eris or Eirene keep anything they liked, just the old, gaudy pieces we all hated, and just a few pieces for each. There must be two dozen pieces in here." She sounded nervous; she pulled her hand away from the necklace like it was going to bite. "And it's everyone's favorite things…Emmeline _loved _these earrings, Eris wore this locket all the time. Maybe a mistake, my grandfather _couldn't _have meant to give us all of this, this has to be a quarter of my family's jewelry."

This was no mistake; Everard Prince did not know the word. This was just another carefully constructed humiliation, this was the overdone wedding all over, another prodding joke, but the punch line in this particular cruelty was harder to find. There was a note in Evangeline's hand, pulled from where it had been tucked along the side of the chest.

_For the new and most deserving House of Macnair, _was written in Everard's hand. _May the many future daughters of your line wear them with dignity and pride in their noble ancestry._

Frustrated fury arced through Walden's head. Another backhanded gesture with clouded motivations. What did old man Prince find so amusing as to toss away a fourth of his family's jewels on the joke?

More commonplace anger replaced it; if they were nothing else, they were unsubtle reminders of everything Walden could not give Evangeline. Her wardrobe of exquisitely tailored robes hung beside his frayed Ministry issue, and now this grand fortune would sit in its chest in his sad little cottage, rarely worn, its beauty wasted. There was no manor for Evangeline and her finery, just this cold, empty exile in cold, empty Scotland with no one but her monster of a husband for company.

"Put this on," he ordered gruffly, picking up an amethyst and onyx necklace that caught his eye. There was a moment's hesitation and he wondered, with an edge of amusement, if she was contemplating another use of her 'no' but she obediently pulled up her hair and let him fasten the collar of precious stones and silver around her white, elegant neck. His hands rested on the sides of her throat, the gemstones cool under his palms. Evangeline reached up to touch the necklace.

"This one's always been my favorite," she said quietly. "Eris never let me wear it, never let me even touch it."

"You wear something every day," he ordered her solidly. "These are yours now, I don't ever want to come home and find you without one of these on."

"If you'd like," she replied, a little dazed, looking over her shoulder.

"Yes," he said firmly, pulling away. "Turn around, let me see you." Evangeline obediently clambered around from where she'd been seated on the edge of the bed.

She was beautiful, a shaded charcoal sketch in black and white and grey, a shadow in the corner. The necklace circled her throat in heavy black with tiny sparkles of deep violet, the bruises on her body bloomed like blue and purple roses on white canvas. The amethysts lent a violet cast to her deep blue eyes and she was entirely his.

If she had not been beautiful, the fact that he _owned _her would have made her so, but even as a thin, self-conscious smile, spread across her face, Walden burned to touch her, this prize no one could ever take from him, to feel that soft flesh bend obediently to his, to drag a few more of the hesitant, surprised shudders of pleasure out of her.

She must have seen everything in his eyes—they were probably transparent with lust—because she took a careful breath in and found her way into his arms, and his hands came up to grasp her hips with almost a mind of their own. Her hands were on his shoulders, her bruised and swollen lips hovering an inch from his ear and her soft warm breath and the smell of her hair seized him up—she smelled faintly sweet, like her floral perfume, but he thought he could smell a little of his own spicy soap and leather smell overlaying it, and another wave of possessive desire spiked through him.

She lay her head on his shoulder, one hand meandering down his back in a path that left fire in its wake, the other threading up into his blue-black hair; he almost asked her to _pull _on his hair, to dig her short neat fingernails into his back until iron red welled around her fingertips and ran down his back, catching in the scars like a stream around rocks.

Instead, he skimmed her body as gently as he knew how, his hands laying whispers up and down her sides until she shivered. She pushed on his shoulders until he was on his back, propped amongst the pillows. She averted her eyes shyly as she straddled him with none of the practiced ease he was so accustomed to in women.

"Am I doing this right?" she asked, his shadow of charcoal and violet spoiled by the pink flush of her cheeks.

Something warm and affectionate bubbled up from some unknown part of him at the sight of her intense concentration. "You can do nothing wrong," he assured her, smoothing the gravel of his voice as best as he could.

Evangeline shifted her weight to her hands on either side of his head, her soot-black hair falling down like a curtain around his head and there was nothing but her in his world. Her face took on a serious, grave cast. "I can do a lot of things that are wrong," she said strangely.

The way the words fell from her mouth sounded wrong, with the grim look on her face. But then the bruised flesh of her lips pressed to his and it was all he could do to hold himself back, to be gentle with her. Her hands were in her hair—surely, _surely _they would come away dirty this time, like he'd thrust his hands into a blackened fireplace—and she was soft and warm above and underneath and around him.

It was not everything he wanted—far, far from it—but from the way she sighed he could almost forget that. Every gentle, shy caress of her hands wrote _I belong to you _over and over, and that seemed like enough.

* * *

I've hijacked my sister's old, unused desktop--while she sits on her pretty new MacBook Pro, grumble grumble. At least it works and I've got internet and word processing capabilities. So, yay for that. I wrote this chapter in a FLASH--began at work yesterday, and sat up until god-knows-when keeping on with it.

Please review! It really makes my day--I'm now addicted to the 'Reader Traffic' thing on the profile, and I love to see all the different places my readers come from! I'm read all over the world, I can't believe it! Thanks, y'all!


	5. The Gutter Rat and the Black Swan

_The Spare Princess_

Chapter Five: The Gutter Rat and the Black Swan

* * *

The Princes treated him no differently, after all that. He still did not belong and was made to feel it perhaps a little more than before. The men seemed eager to emphasize the fact that his marriage had done little in their eyes to better him. It had been a convenient disposal of a surplus and substandard commodity that had cost them little, a gesture lacking in sacrifice. "How is your poor dear wife?" was the rare and only question directed at him, forgotten on the fringe circle of the Pureblood society.

Everard took the keenest interest when other matters failed to amuse him sufficiently. "And how is my darling granddaughter, Mr. Macnair? Elliot, my son, have you heard lately from Mrs. Macnair? You must miss her so terribly…Macnair, have you given thought to starting a family, yet? I should so enjoy a new great-grandson or –granddaughter getting into things!" And then he would smile his nasty, bladed smile.

Evangeline's father was the only one whose regard had significantly changed, and that was decidedly for the worse. The loathing in his eyes—a blue of a similar shade to Evangeline's—had not waned, still glittered as dangerously as ever. Elliot's saving grace in Walden's eyes was the fact that he loved his daughter…for as much as Elliot loathed his son-in-law, Walden felt nothing but a little respect and pity for the man who so keenly felt his failure to protect his youngest daughter. He could not fault the man for considering him an unworthy husband for his daughter—that was the pure and simple truth.

Elliot and his wife and two daughters seemed the last bastion of decency and good breeding within the Prince household—Everard's casual cruelty and disdain for blood bonds permeated his line. The Prince daughters, all married off in the higher echelons of society, were all the sort of petty, backbiting bitches Walden couldn't bear, who tattled and gossiped and put on ugly veneers of pristine politeness. The single (legitimate) male grandson, Evangeline's cousin Edward, was a snivelly and weedy man with close-set dark eyes and already-thinning black hair, with not enough of his grandfather's calculating, manipulative intelligence and more than his fair share of his arrogance and pretension.

The Prince family was decaying, Walden privately thought, whittling themselves down on the inside, the malicious Prince streak turning inwards and hacking away at the bonds that held respectable Pureblood families together. Even Severus Snape, the half-blood son of Evangeline's disowned Aunt Eileen, for all his dirty blood, was a more honorable, respectable wizarding specimen than his legitimate cousins.

And they thought Evangeline, his sweet, beautiful wife… they thought _her _a waste of pure and noble blood.

Walden mentioned the man over the dinner Teapot had made for them one night. Evangeline had nothing but kind, complimentary words for her illegitimate cousin, though she didn't know him very well. "He tried to come speak with my grandfather right before Emmeline's wedding—Grandfather had the house elf turn him away at the door, saying he was no kin of ours." She grew quiet.

Walden hadn't pushed for anything more, wasn't sure there was anything more she had to say. He drank some of the wine—it wasn't very good, had a strange tang to it. Cheap, he realized disgustedly. He downed it anyway.

Teapot did all the cooking and cleaning around the house. Evangeline, even had Walden considered it an appropriate task for his high born wife, was not capable of the spells. Her wand magic was severely lacking, he'd discovered. She could cast only the most basic of spells, and not to great effect. Her cousin Eirene had announced snottily over a family dinner that everyone had thought Evangeline a Squib until she'd made it to Hogwarts and proved herself "moderately capable of concocting a potion."

Her Potions aptitude was an understatement, Walden found. Evangeline had carefully asked permission to seek employment in a Potions shop in Inverness—which he had immediately and firmly denied her, no wife of his would dirty her hands if he could help it—before contenting herself with a small laboratory in the unused storage room off the kitchen. She was more than 'moderately capable;' she was rather gifted in the subject and her study gave her a way to occupy her time. Walden generously stocked her laboratory as well as he could afford (perhaps a little _better_ than he could afford) and felt rather pleased that he could do something to make her happy.

It was not a bad life. Evangeline seemed perfectly content in his home, however lacking he thought she must have found it. She was always there to greet him in some glittering bit of jewelry, to sit with him in his study and learn how to work the finances—though she seemed more adept than she let on at first—to lay in bed beside him. His whole house smelled of her, from the pillows on their bed to his own clothes in the wardrobe.

He was more careful with her than he had been at first. Walden reserved his rougher attentions for his girl in Knockturn, though it was no longer quite as satisfying. Her lacquered blonde hair was gummy and uncomfortable under his fingers, the waxy red lipstick left stains and her cheap perfume clung like dead flowers and ruined the light notes of Evangeline's smell that laced the threads of his robes. Her playful taunts and fighting and her wanton, classless behavior grew wearisome, though the bruises he left grew more colorful as his patience with her grew short.

The rough, painful sort of violent sex he'd always pursued seemed lacking, missing Evangeline's voice, her shy smiles and embarrassed whimpers and delicate fingertips on his face and in his hair. He missed the way she curled up to him in the dark, her cheek to his chest, her soft white arm across the hard muscles of his stomach. There was none of that quiet possession here; this was base and vulgar and not half as enjoyable as it had once been.

The Knockturn girl had never quite got over Walden's marriage to a woman who was not her and was bitterly jealous of his new wife. She made the mistake of mocking Evangeline one evening, her shiny red lips twisting nastily as she grinned at him. "That's right," she purred in his ear, her hands fisted tight in his hair. "That little wife of yours can't do this, can she? Won't give you what you want, what you _need, _will she?"

He'd beaten the whore to within an inch of her life for daring to speak so of Evangeline. She was a gutter rat mocking the elegance and grace of his beautiful black swan, and he felt no remorse leaving her in her Knockturn hovel, bruised and broken and crying pathetically, whimpering some weak-voiced threats of revenge.

He would always be a monster, make no mistake.

Walden had carefully erased every trace of the whore from himself and gone home to find Evangeline asleep in their bed. He tried to let her sleep, tried to slip into bed, but she woke and grinned at him sleepily, reaching her arms out for him and she smelled perfect, felt warm and soft in his arms. He smiled back at her, hands petting her long, soft hair as she fell back asleep on his chest.

He kissed her awake in the morning, leaving tiny light kisses on her eyelids and forehead and cheekbones and jaw and neck just because he knew it would make her happy and she would smile for him. A smile on her face satisfied him more than a bruise on any whore's. He hitched up her virginal white eyelet lace nightgown and he made love to her in the grey morning sunshine, and he enjoyed it because she did. Every giggle and whimper was a triumph, every time he made her sigh his name the best victory he'd ever won.

He didn't leave a single unsightly bruise on her pale perfect skin and that was winning, too. He found joy in making her happy, satisfaction in giving her pleasure, and if that was not love then it was the closest Walden Macnair would ever come to it.

Evangeline found their marriage contract in the pile of papers on the floor beside his desk one day as she reorganized his records. She frowned over it, reading the tiny, elegantly indecipherable Italian script. She looked up at him from her seat on the ancient, battered hardwood floor, the parchment settling onto her lap with disbelief on her face.

"That's odd…my grandfather disinherited all my cousins when they got married—he put it in their marriage contracts. It basically cuts them off from coming back to claim any of the Prince fortune when he dies—everyone in my family is more than petty enough to squabble over baubles and bits just to be nasty. He wants it all leveled on my Uncle Edmund, and then on my cousin Edward. He doesn't want it split up, which is…" She grew painfully quiet.

"Never mind," she said quietly, putting the parchment into a file that she labeled appropriately and filed away. Walden did not ask.

After she'd retired, though, he had gone through the file and reread the marriage contract—he hadn't paid close attention at the signing of it, and was rather concerned with what had upset her in it.

There was no clause in the contract that disinherited Evangeline; there was no mention of anything of the sort.

Walden didn't see anything at all. It was just a marriage contract; it itemized the contents of her dowry—he didn't know how he'd missed the descriptions of all the jewelry Everard had given Evangeline to take with her into her marriage. There was nothing about it that seemed unusual at all, down to the clause that restricted the inheritance of the Prince jewelry and the rest of Evangeline's dowry to blood descendants.

He took a sip of his tea-and-brandy as he perused the contract again. He wrinkled his nose, cursing the house elf under his breath. The damned rat couldn't make tea to save its life, couldn't seem to resist over-sweetening the brew no matter how many times Walden howled about it.

Evangeline was warmer than usual when he came to bed. In the morning, when he woke, the arm that was listlessly draped over his chest was burning, and his little shadow swan was grey with fever. He found the box of poisoned chocolates from a sweet shop in the deeper reaches of Knockturn Alley in the kitchen, his name signed to a note he did not write. Walden burned them, his hands steady in his rage.

Evangeline did not die. Walden would never have let her. He wasn't ever even afraid she would, though for days she lay unconscious, stripped of all strength and burning with fever while everyone around her—the Healers, her distraught sister and father and mother—spoke in 'ifs'. Walden thought only in 'when.'

He disappeared for a few hours one night, but no one noticed.

There was a Ministry investigation into the source of Evangeline's poisoning. It was quickly determined she must have mixed something wrong in her laboratory and the case was closed. Some of her vicious family laughed at her ineptitude.

When she woke he was there, and she managed to smile at him. Walden smiled back and sat down on their bed and cradled her up against him and ran his fingers through the greasy, unwashed lengths of her hair. "You don't have to sit up with me," she whispered, his shirt grasped weakly in her fingers. He hushed her and kissed her hair and she settled against his chest, falling back into an easier sleep.

Everard Prince _had _given a kitten to a manticore the day he had given Evangeline to Walden Macnair. He was a monster, make no mistake.

A landlord in Knockturn grew impatient when the rent never came in and the tenant never came back. Good for nothing whores, they were always wandering off or getting arrested. He sold off what possessions of hers were worth anything and let the dilapidated flat out to another girl, hoping this one would be better about getting the money in on time.

* * *

**Author's (Notes/Senseless Ramblings): **Yay! I got some stuff written! Sorry, yo, I've been working and schooling and sorority-ing (yeah, seriously!) and basically having a life! It's weird having stuff to do and people to hang out with. But yay, frat rush week is over and I don't have to go be freshman boy bait at any more boring parties with lame, classless frat jerks who don't know how to speak to ladies! Celebrations!

One of my new roommates also spotted ff.n over my shoulder while I was posting this and flipped. She's a Harry Potter/Prison Break/The Office lurker and now she's trying to guess who I am on here. We had a whole 'oh my god, are we really this dorky?!' conversation and it was awesome.

Again, I remind you: there is nothing more motivating than a review, especially when I'm as busy and in-demand in RL as I am now! Click the button! Type a few words! Enable my rejection of real life!


	6. The End

_The Spare Princess_

Chapter Six: The End

* * *

The one called Lord Voldemort rose, and the pureblood circles shattered, struck through with change and new politics. The families realigned, reformed, two new rings of power in the elite, smaller and more tightly bound. The first, the larger of the two, bowed and scraped to the rising black, the new dark lord. The second, the smaller, was subdivided in itself; the majority—the Macmillans, the Bones, the Greengrasses, the Potters, the Longbottoms, the Prewetts—found the whole situation deplorable. The rest of the second comprised itself of a few families, namely the Princes and the Blacks, who had more objection to the bowing and scraping inherent in any 'lord' than with the creed of blood purity and domination he espoused. As Everard Prince so coolly and condescendingly told Abraxas Malfoy, "I do not know about Malfoys, but even the lowest of Princes is too high to kneel to anyone, especially such a self-aggrandizing creature of uncertain blood and no respectable family as this so-called 'Lord Voldemort'.

Everard Prince, in his ancient and unshakable pride, would bow to no one. Walden Macnair had been bowing most of his life, it was no hardship to bow to this new master, to pledge himself to this new allegiance, especially as it seemed to offer him the most for his trouble.

But still. He would have stayed true to the high and unworthy Princes if Evangeline had asked it of him.

Bright, rare sunshine made her a silhouette in her window seat in the west-facing sitting room and he could not read her face. The shadow was as black as her hair and they bled together. "I would be defying your family, Evangeline—they would make you feel it."

There was nary a pause in her reply. "You are my family," his shadow replied, not even looking up from the book in her lap. "Do whatever you think is best. I do not doubt your judgment."

He followed Abraxas Malfoy, though he knew the man had only invited him into the circle to spite old Mr. Prince; it didn't quite matter. The new master was a horror to behold, more serpent than man, but Walden was quite accustomed to ugliness and he didn't flinch at the subhuman figure he knelt before. Something pressed at, pressed _through _his mind and _that _he flinched at. The Dark Lord pulled at memories of torture, of murder, of hate and lust and loathing and resentment and rage and jealousy…and grinned. Then he pulled at one of Evangeline; Walden snapped in response, trying to pull away. The creature laughed at that and pulled a hundred more, a hundred moments that Walden had once thrilled in the sole ownership of.

Lord Voldemort withdrew, his gash of a mouth drawing into a cold-blooded grin. "Your loyalty will win great things for her. And you _are_ a loyal one, aren't you, Walden Macnair?"

The Mark burned into his arm, and he gritted his teeth against the scream he wanted to unleash. He Apparated into a forgotten clearing deep in the Forbidden Forest after the meeting and brutally exterminated the two giant spiders who had the poor luck to cross his path before he went home, too afraid of how he might injure Evangeline if he returned in such a wounded animal rage. His arm still burned, as though the Mark was searing down past flesh and into bone and out the other side, but worse still was those hundred pieces of Evangeline that were stolen, jealous greed over what was no longer solely his. That burned worse than the Mark.

He hacked at the spiders until his hands stopped shaking, and then he went home to her. She was still awake, waiting for him, and he sat up all night with her, his back against the old, carved wood of the headboard, Evangeline in his arms, her featherlight fingertips tracing the Mark as he told her about everything he had been promised, everything he hoped for.

It was under this lord, he hoped, that he might give her back all she had lost when her grandfather had thrown her to him: her status, her wealth, a grand, beautiful home, beautiful clothes at her whim, and new jewelry that Walden could admire her in without Everard stealing into his thoughts and washing her out. "I swear, Evangeline, I will build you a name worth carrying and our children will have a family to be proud of. No one will _ever _pity you again," he swore to her in an unnecessary whisper.

She remained quiet throughout all of his words and promises, and she remained so, but she trembled in his arms and pressed her face closer into his neck. "What is it?" he asked her, his rough hands combing through her hair, the strands of it catching on the axe-worn calluses.

"Nothing," she whispered.

When his hands crept up under her nightgown, her own followed them to stall his path, and she drew herself ever-so-slightly away. "Not tonight," she said softly. "I'm bleeding," she added, quiet and humiliated.

"Again?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

"…Yes," she replied slowly, hesitation and fear creeping into her voice. Not pregnant. Another month gone by and she still wasn't pregnant. "I'm sorry." Her voice came low. Her hands slid from where they clung to his shoulders, and she curled them close to her chest, drawing into herself.

They didn't speak any more words after that. He fell asleep somehow angry with her. Didn't she see? Everything he was doing, all he was suffering…it was all for the family they would have, the one she was so slow in giving to him. He was trying to give her everything she had once had and _more,_ and she couldn't give him this one thing he wanted? Couldn't give him children, a line of descent to build a name for? Immortality, really; that was what it was to found a family, for his name to endure.

He was quiet in the morning, as well, not speaking to her until he finished a cup of Teapot's too-sweet tea. He felt calmer after it, and the fearful rigidity in Evangeline's posture thawed as his quiet anger faded. "I'm sorry," he apologized carefully, between sips of tea. Evangeline looked entirely relieved, a smile on her face as she shook her head to say _no need, no need, it's nothing. _ "There's no hurry, really," he continued on. "You're so young, we have years," he assured her. She nodded along in quick, appeasing agreement.

Another month went. And another. And another. Once he began to notice the time, it seemed to pass so much more quickly. He didn't even need to ask anymore. Evangeline got nervous around him every month, skittish, waiting for the question and having only the same answer, the same disappointment.

And then, at the cold, awkward Christmas dinner that they had somehow still been invited to at the Prince estate, Everard cast a cruel, devious glance between his granddaughter and her husband, a malicious plan forming. The dinner was sparsely attended—Eris, Eirene, and Emmeline had all married into families that, for varying reasons, no longer kept company with the Princes. Everard held court only over his spinster sister, his two sons, their wives, Edmund's son Edward, and Evangeline and Walden. He had a limited number of victims, and seemed to be calculating the best way to extract as much possible amusement from them as possible.

"A sad Christmas, with no children to brighten the hall," Everard remarked with exaggerated disappointment. Evangeline went grey in her seat and next to her, Walden tensed. "Surely next year, Evangeline, next Christmas?" he asked facetiously, another great show. "_Surely!_ A Macnair son to carry on such a _worthy_ name!" It was so laced with sarcasm and mockery and malicious amusement that it was impossible to misunderstand. All the pieces fell into place, heavier than Walden ever could have imagined, and the delicate framework of the life he had been engineering buckled under the weight of it all and his vision went black.

The wedding. The jewelry. The marriage contract. _This _was the great punch line and it felled him.

Evangeline sat frozen next to him, fear scrawled into every broken line of her body.

They had given her to him because she was useless, she was the end. Everard had given her the jewelry because she would have no children to inherit it, it would be back in the Prince vault the moment she died with no blood of hers to lay claim to it. Everard had not bothered to disinherit her like her sister, like her cousins, because whatever little things she troubled herself to claim from her Uncle Edmund or cousin Edward would revert when the jewelry did.

Walden thought he had been gifted the beginning of a line, of a name. He'd been given the end of one. Old Mr. Prince gifted no one a rose…_here _were the razor thorns for his lovely little shadow.

If Walden had been able to see past his blinding rage to notice anyone but his petrified wife, he would have seen the cruel, pleased expression on Everard's face. Evangeline's father was wretched, somewhere between complete and utter _hate _and unadulterated terror for his daughter's sake.

(The next morning saw Elliot Prince brought in by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the use of the Cruciatus curse and attempted patricide. He was later sentenced to life in Azkaban.)

But Walden could not see past the damnation of every plan he had so carefully cultivated. He nearly dragged Evangeline out of her seat, pulling her along behind him as he thundered to the door, past the anti-Apparition boundary.

Evangeline collapsed on the floor of their kitchen, clutching her bruised wrist, silent but for the shallow, panicked breathing of deathly terror, a tangle of black hair and evergreen silk on the ugly wood floor.

Walden could not speak. Or think. Or move. There was only fury. It _burned. _

_No. _That was his arm, his Mark. It burned vivid, calling him to service. He thrilled to it—his hands itched to wreak disaster and ruin as effortlessly as Everard's words had toppled all his grand plans and ambitions. He left her there on the floor, Apparated straight out of the kitchen, away from the remains of his crumbled hopes.

The night quelled some of his rage; the screams and the blood and the pleas for mercy, for life, for husbands, wives, children, parents. It felt good to destroy, ruin, steal, spoil, maim. He reveled in it, destroying lives under the emerald green glow of the Master's conjured constellation.

The grey, overcast morning light crept across the kitchen when he returned, casting long, vaguely defined shadows over the floor. Evangeline still lay where he'd left her, her face a few streaks of washed out white between the thick, obscuring shadow of her hair. She was asleep.

He took tea at the kitchen table—Teapot hopped nimbly over his unconscious mistress to deliver the sick-sweet brew Walden was actually beginning to prefer.

Though she didn't move at first, he knew the moment she woke. The slack in her muscles tightened up, her breathing quickened—she was an animal hunted, cornered, once again the vixen in the trap. He set down his tea cup and, in a few strides, crossed the floor and carefully gathered her up, trying not to pull at any of her scattered, tangled hair.

Settling into his favorite armchair, he pulled her close against him, trying to soften her fright-frozen form. "I told you," he whispered gruffly, pressing his nose into her hair, "You will never have a reason to fear me, Evangeline. I promised you and I am not so low a man to not keep my word."

She looked up at him with wide, unbelieving eyes. "I thought you were going to kill me," she managed to say, almost choking on the end of it.

"No," he whispered. "I could never…" he trailed off. "No."

She curled in closer, pressing her face into his neck, still breathing through her fading panic. "That's what my family thought you would do when you found out."

Some faint flicker of rage flared through him, but Evangeline's slowing breathing, the delicate fragrance of her hair, the weight of her against his chest gave him pause, cooled the blind passion into something more useful.

"Your family," he began carefully, calmly, certainly, "They are going to pay."

Evangeline was quiet a long moment and then, in a strange, new steel and venom voice that was not quite unfamiliar, she said simply, "I know how to make them."

* * *

I could be doing a lot of useful things. I wrote this instead. There's one more chapter after this (don't freak out at the title of this chapter, it's not actually 'the end'!), so prepare yourselves for the end! I'm hoping the emails go out on this...and _please _remember to review!


	7. Lesser Evils

_The Spare Princess_

Chapter Seven: Lesser Evils

* * *

Walden had generally steered clear of Evangeline's potions laboratory—there had been a few subtle mentions about the precarious and sometimes dangerous concoctions she sometimes left to simmer. Though he was by no means truly barred from the room, he tended to avoid the chamber, filled as it was with delicate crystal vials and carefully temperature-charmed fires and thin glass stirring wands—all sorts of things better suited to Evangeline's clever, careful little hands than to his own clumsy paws.

He sat with her there now, in the evening after work, in the dusty velvet divan, worn from years of use, so old that even the infrequent Scottish sun had managed to fade the burgundy fabric to a sad sort of raspberry pink. Evangeline curled up with him, her bird-boned little body in his arms and her mind a hundred miles away as her quill-clutching hand danced over parchment, writing and scratching in ink that was the same blue-black of her eyes.

Walden knew with a certainty, as he watched her work, that there was no one in the world who had a clear picture of how beautifully brilliant she truly was. He'd always known she was far more intelligent than he; it showed in her eyes, in her speech, but now he was beginning to recognize that she did not see the world the same at all. Even her family had offered only grudging, half-certain acknowledgements of her talent, a trivial and unredeeming footnote to all of her faults and shortcomings. They had tossed away a priceless gem because her setting was bent. It was clear here, as he watched her china doll face serene in concentration. Her eyes were fixed on the paper without even seeing the marks she made, she saw _beyond _the sketches and equations and tables and words she inked onto the vellum.

"This formula should work," she assured him, her eyes scanning her long scroll of notes. She was curled over the stained, acid-scarred table she used as her writing desk. Her words weren't really for him; she thought aloud sometimes, and even when he wasn't in the room, he could sometimes hear her speaking to no one. He combed his fingers through the matte silk of her hair as he stood over her, watching her quill trace over words and symbols that meant nothing to him. He smoothed the hair back down across her shoulders and back, stepping away to let her work. He wasn't helpful—he'd scraped through without a Potions OWL and couldn't brew so much as a sneezing solution, but he liked to watch her while she worked. She was beautiful; anything but weak. "Yes," she continued, sitting back. "But this has no place in the world; just the one brew and I'll destroy the rest, destroy the research."

Walden wandered from his place at her side, inching through the room. It was no place for him; packed with bookcases, leaving only the narrowest of aisles between the floor-to-ceiling shelves of delicate crystal and cracking leather-bound tomes and pottery and complicated-looking instruments. Evangeline was more suited to the room, she could slip like a shade between the towering cases, all silent, graceful efficiency and care. Walden had to pay careful mind where he swung his arms and how he moved, a bull tiptoeing through a china shop.

A small cauldron bubbled in one of the fireplaces that lined the back wall. The smell of it grew stronger as he approached, the steam rising from the mother-of-pearl liquid in swirling spirals. He started, nearly upsetting a basket of crumbled leaves as Evangeline slid up beside him, her hand moving up his forearm. "What's this?" he asked, moving closer to it.

"An experiment," she said quickly, quietly. There was that animal skittishness back again, the careful caged way she moved with her words. She was regarding him cautiously, the workings in her eyes a thousand times too fast for him to read. It was animal fear tempered with an intelligence that far exceeded his own.

"Illegal, Evangeline?" He laughed a little to himself. Leaning in to her conspiratorially, he whispered in her ear. "I'll not be telling them, don't worry yourself." He kissed her on the mouth. "But I might be needing some bribing."

Cool, soft relief melted across her tight face and the smile on her face spread like warmed butter. "Maybe it is, I don't quite know yet."

"Smells good," he commented. It was an understatement; the potion smelled like heaven. "You've been working on this for a while?" She nodded and he laughed roughly, pulling her up against him and leaning down to breathe in the scent of her hair. "You've smelled just like it as long as I'm remembering! Even in the garden when I first met you, you smelled just like this."

She turned her face up, puzzlement written on it. "I have?" she asked carefully. She had a studying look on her face, her eyes trained on him almost blankly, like she was sizing up one of her alchemical equations.

Walden nodded, shrugging. "Thought it was perfume."

"I smell just like it? Does it smell like anything I don't?" She questioned further, peering around him to look at the cauldron in question. Walden sniffed, putting more thought into the answer.

"Maybe a little bit like…iron." Evangeline never smelled like iron, like rust. That was the tang in the background of the scent; it was the bite of his axe, the red of blood. He shrugged. "But mostly you."

Her expression lightened, the shielded confusion that hung on the corners of her mouth falling free and she smiled at him in a strange, beautiful, diamond-perfect way. "I suppose I just can't smell it anymore," she said faintly, her face glowing like platinum in the moonlight. She crept her arms around his neck until he picked her up and held her to his chest, her silk slippered toes just brushing the scrubbed wood floor and her face tucked into his neck.

It was a strange and beautiful moment he would remember always without ever really knowing why. He didn't hear her whisper, "I love you, too."

* * *

Walden was sure that no further invitations to any Prince family gatherings would be issued. Between the mark on his arm and the scene at the last occasion, why would Everard bother any longer? Evangeline merely smiled and advised patience.

"Surely he can't be having any more to do with us?" Walden muttered over a cup of tea and the crumbs of Teapot's best shortbread. "He's had his fun, I'm thinking he's done with us."

Evangeline's face was crossed with some sad, stony expression; she looked like some angelic agent of divine retribution. "He's never finished with anyone."

Surely enough, an Easter invitation arrived by owl, and the hour came.

Everard was as infuriatingly jocund as ever, hiding his horns beneath a brass halo. "Walden, Evangeline, how lovely you could join us! Isn't it just the finest of Easter morns?" he greeted them, arms spread in the wide foyer of his grand estate as though he were welcoming treasured guests and not his afternoon entertainment.

Walden had promised not to speak much—the fury that rose up in him at the sight of his wife's old demon of a grandfather made politic words too much a hardship. It was just a touch too early for such anger.

"Beautiful, Grandfather," Evangeline replied, meek and humble as she submitted for a familial embrace. Walden's hands itched for destruction, his own skin crawled to see Everard's rheumy, liver-spotted claws on Evangeline. Walden managed a semi-polite nod to acknowledge the greeting before the man led them through the painting-lined corridor to the dining hall.

The dinner was even more sparsely attended than the disastrous Christmas. Evangeline's parents, what little refuge of decency had remained in the house, were absent; Elliot in Azkaban and Catherine having been taken in by her Macmillan relatives. Everard held court only over his wife, son, daughter-in-law and grandson, the last, blighted branch of the Prince name, this once-mighty tree thinned down to these few unworthy animals.

The tree would fall tonight, hewn down by Walden Macnair's axe.

Everard was in rare form, baiting and sniping and leering at his two victims. Evangeline's hand steadied Walden under the table; three carefully spaced taps: _almost, almost, almost. _She kept her eyes trained on the fine, polished dining table, her food untouched, completely silent. Walden could not remain so still; he shifted restlessly, impatiently in his seat, struggling for the serene patience that came so easily to Evangeline, peaceful beside him.

The old demon raised a glittering crystal goblet, a blood garnet of red wine cut in a hundred facets delicate in his hand, gesturing at Evangeline. "Must be hard for you," he sympathized, a gloating tone greasing his voice. "Easter, springtime, rebirth, renewal. Must be difficult to be barren." It wasn't even subtle; it was a sloppy blow, a thoughtless, desperate attack against an untouchable enemy.

And then it was time. It had been the hour, this was the moment.

Evangeline raised her head, a cool, detached indifference slack on her face. "I wouldn't know. I'm two months pregnant."

A tic was the only reaction Everard had, an ugly twitch in the crepe-paper skin around his eye. Her uncle laughed, guffawing doubt in the other otherwise quiet room.

Walden was just as floored. Her hand squeezed his under the table and she spared a momentary spangle of color, a smile shot sideways at him, and nodded quickly. _She was pregnant._

"Let's not be telling stories, Evangeline," Everard chastised her. "It's a sad fact, but that Healer we had examine you assured us you were incapable of bearing children, that you would always be too fragile. I imagine that's quite hard for you to accept."

"Well, then, I suppose I'm just defying impossibility at every turn today, Grandfather." She leveled her ink blue eyes on her grandfather, meeting his gaze for the first time in her life. "You always assured us the Prince name would last forever. It's a sad fact," she echoed back at him, arsenic running under the satin of her gentle tone, "but that name ends at this table. Tonight."

Her uncle and cousin began to look worried, her grandmother and aunt already casting fearful looks at Walden. Everard just scoffed his disbelief.

"Are you going to have your husband kill us, Evangeline? He's a good duel, I'll admit, but three Prince men? And with your dead weight to protect?" He took an arrogant, leisurely sip from his wineglass. "I don't like your odds."

"Oh, there's no need for Walden to dirty his hands," Evangeline smiled serenely over at her husband. "I've already killed you all, and more." She looked meaningfully down at her untouched wineglass. "You should be kinder to the house elves; they've never thought twice before obeying me."

"The wine!" Evangeline's aunt started screaming, red panic spreading out across her cheeks and the bridge of her pug Parkinson nose as she smashed her half-empty glass on the table. Evangeline's grandmother, a birdlike little talon of an old woman, had fallen out of her chair, quite dead, her wineglass emptied.

"Cowardly poisoner!" Edward, the cousin, screamed, drawing his wand. Walden was too quick and Edward hit the ground, toppling alongside his grandmother.

Walden killed the Parkinson aunt just to stop her screaming. The room fell silent.

"I was kind to them," Evangeline said softly, looking over to the uncle that remained, stock-still in his chair. "And to you, Uncle Edmund. It's painless, just a simple poison, I promise." He seemed quite unable to speak; his breathing stopped and there they were, a demon and two lesser evils come to exact their revenge.

Everard was grey with rage...or perhaps it was his death taking hold. He tried to speak; Walden silenced him ruthlessly, disarmed the wand that was being edged out of his sleeve. The monster had been speaking for far too long, and Evangeline had been silent all of her life. Walden helped her from her seat, offering a chivalrous arm to lead her around the table. She drifted to the head of the table with all the cool dignity of an empress ascending her dais and so she was; all the heirs to this grandeur were dead or disowned and so she prevailed.

She looked down on her grandfather, who still grasped tightly to his wineglass, curled back into this throne-like chair. "But you," she said coldly, "For_ you_, there is no death. Oh, your breathing will stop, and your eyes will close, and your body will die and rot away, but you are _tied down_. There will be nothing for you but a failed, decaying corpse. I will throw you a grand funeral…repayment for my lovely wedding, the loving gesture of a dutiful granddaughter, and I will brick you up in a grand mausoleum and you'll exist there until the world ends. Maybe even after. _You _will exist, and your name will die." She smiled softly, leaning in closer to Everard, who was visibly, if silently, fading. "Your arrogance has given me _everything; _my champion and our revenge. I _swear _the Prince name will fade and my children will build up a house from your ashes. Macnair shall be grander, more noble a house than this waste." She drew an elegant hand back over the spilt wine and death behind her.

And Everard Prince died, there in his throne, the last of his name, helpless before the kitten and her manticore champion.

Evangeline's face turned up to Walden's as he tucked his wand back into his sleeve. She smiled softly up at him, and he leaned down and gently kissed her.

"A baby?" he asked.

She smiled. "Yes."

He swept her up against him, carefully gentle. After a moment, she stepped back away. Walden wielded the wand he had stolen from Everard. _"Morsmordre!"_

The constellation, green haze and pinpricks of light, rose in the air to hover over the house. Walden cast the wand aside and shared one more smile with Evangeline. Then she started screaming.

* * *

The Daily Prophet called the fate of the Prince family a tragedy.

_A truly frightening blow from the Dark,_ they wrote._ Mrs. Evangeline Macnair, the last surviving heir, discovered her family murdered on Easter morning when she and her husband, the respected Ministry employee Walden Macnair, arrived for a holiday luncheon. The attack has been credited as the work of You-Know-Who's followers, and investigation continues._

_The funeral was widely attended and took place on the 23__rd__ of April, a Friday._

Evangeline threw the paper into the rubbish bin, along with a worn, stained old Potions book: _Devotios, Amortentia, and Variations._

* * *

The tea tasted funny; somehow bitter, lacking the sweet cloy he'd grown to like over the months. Walden shouted into the kitchen for Teapot. "The tea's wrong again! I haven't had a decent cup in weeks!"

Evangeline ambled into the dining room, resplendent in forget-me-not blue maternity robes. "Is there something wrong, Walden?" she asked, pausing in the doorway.

He jumped up, out the new, wide throne that stood at the head of the table. They'd burned Everard's chair. In a few steps, he charged over to her and escorted her to the long seat they shared at the head of the table, sitting down beside her only when she'd assured him twice she was more than comfortable.

She took a sip from his teacup. "It tastes all right to me," she told him, her eyes trained on his, studying his face. "It tastes normal...Teapot was making it funny before, I thought you didn't like it?"

"I got used to it...It just hasn't been the same, not since we moved here." He cast his eyes around the huge hall, once again assessing it appreciatively. Evangeline shrugged, leaning into him, pressing her face into his shoulder. "Must be the house," Walden decided, leaning over to press his face into her hair.

"Do I still smell good?"

"Perfect." Walden smiled into her hair, running a hand over the swell of her stomach.

"Perfect," Evangeline echoed, smiling.

xXx

* * *

I think I like this chapter most of all. It was hard to get started but, really, once I did..._MAGIC._

Also, maybe I'm like the producers of The Sixth Sense, who said that they sat through the finished movie thinking "Fuck! The red, it's too obvious! They're gonna guess straight off he's dead!" because I was _certain _the funny-tasting tea was a bit too heavy-handed but...you got it, right?


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